Nevertheless, the following year, PNC Financial Services Group launched a "Virtual Wallet" product. It sought trademark protection, asking to own the commercial rights to two consecutive words that had been pushed together by the press and industry more than a decade earlier.

And it succeeded - at least at convincing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The English language hasn't been nearly so cooperative, as reporters, technologists and bankers alike continue to employ "virtual wallet" as a generic description for a broad class of digital goods.

Not that that has stopped PNC from trying, as The Chronicle learned earlier this month. The company's law firm sent a reporter here a note asking the publication to "refrain from misuse of our client's VIRTUAL WALLET trademark."

Originality counts

My objections here are twofold. First, law firms have no business telling publications protected by the First Amendment how to use language, so long as we're not writing lies or libeling anyone.

But more broadly, I resent companies taking a Homestead Act approach to the English language, claiming a piece as their own just because they work it a little while.

My take on trademarks is roughly analogous to my perspective on patents: If you've created something genuinely original, you might have some claim of ownership. The least companies can do is squish together some pleasant-sounding syllables - I'm looking at you, Celexa.

But PNC's Virtual Wallet, a hybrid savings and checkings account, takes a withdrawal from the public commons without making a deposit. And we simply shouldn't let companies cherry-pick our lexicon for their own commercial gain.

Incidentally, I'm picking on PNC because they clumsily brought themselves to our attention. But the Pittsburgh bank is far from the worst offender when it comes to trademarks.

In 2005, the New York Times explored the curious case of Leo Stoller, who trademarked the terms "stealth," "bootlegger," "hoax" and - you really can't make this stuff up - "chutzpah." He later attempted to claim the right to the term "Google," which takes a whole lot of, ummm, gumption.

But back to PNC.

The company can go after competitors for using its trademarked term for commercial purposes, but it has no legal power to stop the press or public for using two words in lower cases, said Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor focused on intellectual property. All PNC can hope to do is persuade us all to change the way we apply the term.

Mind you, a law firm issuing an official note with words like "refrain" and "misuse" might lead some to believe their powers go beyond mere persuasion, which is almost surely the point of doing so.

The reason PNC so fervently wishes to shift our minds on the subject is that if the term does become generic in common usage, the company can lose rights to it.

"We value our trademarks, we take measures to protect them and we just try to make sure folks are aware we have a trademark on that name," Marcey Zwiebel, a PNC spokeswoman explained. "If people use that as a generic term for other apps, it could eventually lead Virtual Wallet to lose its current association with us."

A 'descriptive' term

Of course, it's questionable whether the company should have been granted the trademark in the first place, or whether its claim would stand up to any real legal test. The examples above suggest "virtual wallet" was already in fairly common use by the time PNC got around to submitting its application.

"The question is whether the public was using this as the general term for this kind of service before (PNC) started using it as a brand," Stanford's Lemley explained in an e-mail.

"Even if it wasn't in use as a generic term, it is at most 'descriptive' because it describes characteristics of the service they are offering," he added.

"Brand owners aren't entitled to rights in descriptive terms unless they can prove that through advertising and long use people have come to associate the term with their product specifically."

Companies have a mixed record when it comes to retaining their trademarks as terms slip into generic use. Aspirin, escalator, thermos and cellophane all lost trademark protections, Lemley said. But Xerox and Jeep managed to pull their terms back from the brink, somehow successfully nudging along the alternatives "copy" and "sport-utility vehicle"

For its part, PNC helpfully suggests we use options like "mobile boarding passes," "NFC-enabled passes" and "barcode scanning tickets." If they think any of those will actually take hold, they're BANANAS.